The first steamship to hold the Blue Riband was the SS Sirius, she held this record for a few hours on Apr. 22, 1838 when she arrived in New York. The small sidewheeler's speed record of 8.03 knots was eclipsed later in the day when the Great Western arrived. She returned to New York three more times before her career crossing the North Atlantic was finished. She was then used as a coastal packet running between Dublin and Cork and was relegated to obscurity, but her name would again make the papers when on Jan. 16, 1847 she came to grief in Ballycotton Bay, Ireland.

She was on her usual run which normally took about 18 hours, but this trip hampered by strong headwinds and rough seas. At around 1am the winds died down, but a heavy fog set upon the area and crewmen claimed that the ship's bows could barely be seen from the paddle boxes. With almost all the passengers sleeping or at least in their berths the ship suddenly shook slightly, some thought they had bumped the quay at Cork, but when a second collision shook the ship from stem to stern, the passengers dressed and came on deck to learn that they had struck a rock.

With the fog so thick it was impossible for the captain to tell exactly where he was, or what he had hit. They could see no lights nor tell how far away land was, so he reversed the engines and the ship came free of the rocks. She was however taking on water, but the pumps were keeping up with the influx and there appeared to be no danger of sinking immediately. It seems the plan was to keep her afloat until daylight so the captain could make for a safe landing.

Less than an hour later it was reported to the captain that the water was rising and the engineer feared it would reach the boilers and put out the fires, so to avoid a tragedy the captain ran her aground, to his luck he was right under the Ballycotton Coast Guard House. It would take the Coast Guard some time before they could render aid to those on board and the danger of the ship breaking up was a distinct possibility, so it was decided to launch the lifeboats.

These inadequate boats and the panic of those onboard the Sirius led to the deaths of twenty persons when the overloaded lifeboat capsized upon hitting the water, all those including an infant perished and wound seem to have been the only casualties of the ninety-one on board.

Much of the credit for saving the remaining people is due to one Capt. Archibald Macameron, a passenger who was a river steamer captain. He single handedly grabbed a hawser, went over the side and made it fast to a rock on shore. With the help of two sailors they rescued twenty people over two hours, after which the Coast Guard boat's arrived and removed those remaining on board.

Getting off the ship was perilous enough, but now those who had survived had two other obstacles between them and safety. They had landed at the bottom of a cliff and now after struggling to get off the ship and surviving the cold they had to climb. As one can imagine this would be a daunting task under the best of circumstances even if you were equipped to do so. But these people were not rock climbers and they had one other problem that most climbers do not have to deal with, the local population.

It seems that dozens of locals came out not to aid the survivors, but to plunder the ship and those who had come ashore. They were told by the Coast Guard men that if they had saved any of their possessions that they would be in greater danger from the "wreckers" than from the sea. Of course nobody was able to save anything and finally they made their way up the cliff to safety.

The Sirius was left to her destiny and was consumed by the sea, the ship is now long gone, but not forgotten